


Repainting

by Spinchip (Thatkindghost)



Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post S3, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, the other ninja are mentioned/appear briefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 22:41:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30146706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thatkindghost/pseuds/Spinchip
Summary: After the Overlord is defeated, there’s a painting on the side of a building Cole visits nearly every day. it’s Zane.And then it’s gone. (just like Zane.)
Relationships: Cole/Zane (Ninjago)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	Repainting

Cole sees it only because he can’t stand to be in the school with the others, grief sick and heavy in the halls. It’s too little and too much at the same time, walking into the kitchen in the morning to make breakfast, or passing by the classroom that once belonged to him- and to Cole, the oppressive weight of loss is just too-

(His dad sitting at the kitchen table, head in his hands, palms pressed into his eyes to keep himself from falling apart. Mom isn’t here anymore.)

-familiar.

He’s walking out of the corner store six blocks away from the wreckage of borg tower (they say there’s still ice there, two weeks after, that it only melts when they chip it into pieces) and he’s not really paying attention, his headphones firmly clamped over his ears to block out the world, and he glances up and- and it’s Zane. Not actually, not in the flesh (the metal?) but in big blocks of spray paint across the broad side of an electronic store across the street, fat strokes of color and lines. He’s got that soft, genuine smile on his face, the one where his eyebrows curve up and his eyes crinkle, one that Cole never saw too often near the end. His shoulders are squared and sure, his hands curled loosely around his waist, playing with his fingers in a gesture so familiar it makes Cole feel like he’s drowning.

All around him are flowers, all different kinds, varying skill levels- a collaboration between the city. Cole half wishes he knew more flower symbolism, wondering if the red and whites, the thick green of the palm leaves, have any depth to them other than a beautiful frame. Curled in chunky cursive along the bottom is an inscription-

**_Thank you._ **

Cole starts crying in the middle of the sidewalk.

It’s not a pretty, neat little cry either- it catches painfully in his chest, snapping out of his lungs in a short sob he has to bite back, ducking into the alley next to the 7-11 to try and compose himself, holding his flimsy plastic grocery bag like a life line. He can’t bring himself to step back out for a long while, too long, far after he’s finished his impromptu cry and scrubbed the evidence off his face. He’ll see him again. (It’s all he wants and more than he can handle, painful and cathartic. He’d turned all their picture frames around at the school and Kai had yelled at him for an hour.)

Edging back onto the street, he can’t help but look, gaze practically magnetized to the street art. His heart swells painfully but he doesn’t cry again, and he crosses to the other side of the road in a haze, walking down the sidewalk until he’s standing right in front of the image. It’s huge, towering over him, and it’s bright and beautiful and full of life. There are signatures scratched into the bricks or drawn on with sharpies, a cacophony of love and support and shared grief. Cole traces the Y from the inscription with light, trembling fingers.

“I’m sorry you were alone.” The words come unbidden, crowding behind his teeth until they tumble out, “I’m sorry I hid.”

Zane smiles benignly, forgiving.

He visits the portrait more than he visits his statue in the park (more than he visits his bed these days, plagued with insomnia, the **boom-crack** of an explosion playing on repeat when he lays in the dark) because the painting has something to it the statue doesn’t. This art is alive in a way Zane can’t be anymore, animated and colorful and bright, smiling and warm. Cole sits across from it at the cafe, their outdoor seating in the perfect spot, and he shares a coffee with Zane.

It feels like it could be closure. He didn’t get to say goodbye, he didn’t get to say a lot of things (Hands brushing when they walk side by side, secret smiles and inside jokes, _I love y-_ ) and now that it’s too late, all he has is this (and a piece of his faceplate tucked into a box and shoved under his bed, out of sight. he doesn’t want to think about it.) He’s only ever talked to it once, the first time, but sometimes he wants to. It would be nice to pretend, even if for a moment.

Instead he just sits under the umbrella at this fancy little table and traces the outline of the roses around him with his eyes.

It helps him remember the good times, this tribute to his death. The smile on his face imprinted onto every happy memory he has of the nindroid, the softness of his eyes achingly familiar. It hurts every day, will probably hurt forever, and thinking about him is a raw and bleeding wound, but when he looks at the expression on his face, can see it with his own eyes, it makes the memories easier to bear.

Kai is drinking more now. He goes out nearly every night, and there are stretches of days where he doesn’t come home- Lloyd and Nya used to worry and fret, now they are just tired. Kai argues with everyone, about everything, constantly. He’s angrier now, furious at the world and wounded. Jay left a while back, moved back in with his parents, stopped responding to Nyas texts. Cole hasn’t heard from him in a while either. Nya beats her punching bag until her knuckles bleed and then smiles with bandages around her hands and says everything is fine.

And Cole sits in a cafe staring at a painting of Zane every week.

None of them have handled it well.

Lloyd’s been the best, actually. His father offering a support system he needed, and Cole is grateful for that, because he knows there’s no way he could be that for him right now.

His Dad calls him a lot, to check in on him. Cole doesn’t really want to talk about it.

(Half a face plate under his bed. His mom’s picture shoved behind a stack of old records at his dad’s house, in his old room. He doesn’t want to think about it.)

He’s never been good at this, at the what comes after. Dad had spiraled and he’d been too numb to do anything but fight with him and scream and yell. Kai and Jay were already at rock bottom and all Cole had done was get there first and break out his pickaxe. Nya has never looked more exhausted. When he wakes up- or really, when he gets out of the bed he never slept in- and walks out into an empty school, he feels a sour bitterness on the back of his tongue becuase everything is wrong wrong wrong. Lloyd is already gone, fled the oppressive weight of the empty bed and empty kitchen to spend time with the ones still here, his father and his mother. Nya is asleep on the couch in their living room space, waiting for her brother. Kai isn’t home, and might not be again.

Cole drapes a blanket over her curled up form and locks the door behind him when he leaves.

The walk to the coffee shop is something he knows by heart, a familiar rhythm to his steps he bounces with on days it hurts a little less. No one bothers him on his walk, his hair too shaggy and grown out, his five o’clock shadow too prominent to be easily recognizable.

When he rounds the corner, he’s got a greeting prepared for the picture, and for a long moment it doesn’t compute that the hello fell on a blank canvas.

Because the painting is gone.

He stops in the middle of the sidewalk, frowning, trying to put the pieces together that just don’t want to fit. Empty. What? Where- did they paint over-? He’s gone?

_He’s lost him again?_

White-hot flush of shame and hurt, a lump in his throat he can’t swallow past, his chest is so tight it aches. Fingers clenched into fists. He can’t focus. He can’t think, it hurts too much, pain making his eyes ache and his head pound and his heart jack-rabbit in his chest likes its trying to do him a favor and explode. The sun burns across his eyes, and he blinks- the store is still pale white, not even the vaguest hint of a memorial.

He’s at the school, how did he get here? His legs ache, Zane fills his head and it makes him want to cry and scream and break something-

He doesn’t want to think about this, he doesn’t want to think about him, he wants to forget forget _forget_ so he can ignore the way his chest is caving in and hollowing him out, so he can ignore the empty empty bed and the empty empty pit in his stomach swallowing up all happiness he’d ever had-

No more, he can’t do it anymore.

“Cole?” Nya asks, sitting up on the couch as he bee lines for his room.

He slams the door, grabbing spare cash, clothes shoved in a bag, his phone- no, _fuck it_ , he doesn’t need it. Picture, memories, mementos of him he can’t look at- and when he passes Nya again she says, “What happened- no! Please don’t go- Cole-!” But he’s out the door before she can convince him to stay.

“Come back!” She begs, standing on the threshold, in the doorway to the last place he’d ever called home, “I can’t- please!”

Neither can he.

(Half a face plate under his bed. His mom’s picture shoved behind a stack of old records at his dad’s house, in his old room. Memories stifled and pushed down and hidden. _He doesn’t want to think about it._ )

So he won’t.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my friend Liam for the illustration with this fic! Please check out the original post here: https://unknown-sigils.tumblr.com/post/643654994939265024


End file.
